(PLO) – Midfielder Bruno Fernandes admitted that the Manchester United dressing room was scared after the disciplinary sentence of Marcus Rashford.
That was the headline in the Mirror (UK). The Mirror wrote, “Erik ten Hag left Marcus Rashford on the bench during Manchester United’s win over Wolves last December for disciplinary reasons, despite the England forward’s impressive scoring form.
Bruno Fernandes admits the Manchester United dressing room has been “fearfully left behind after head coach Erik ten Hag brutally dealt with Marcus Rashford”, despite Rashford being their top player.
Rashford angered his manager when he missed a team meeting after accidentally oversleeping. But instead of forgiving his star striker, Ten Hag delivered an iron punch and threw Rashford to the bench in the Premier League clash with Wolves.
Cristiano Ronaldo has just left Manchester United and Rashford has scored in both appearances since his impressive display for England at the 2022 World Cup. But Ten Hag, a strict disciplinarian. showed no exception to the rules he laid down at the “theatre of dreams”. It scared the rest of Ten Hag’s team.
The man who often holds the MU captain’s armband Bruno Fernandes once mentioned this at the time when Rashford had just received a disciplinary sentence. Now, the Portuguese midfielder continues to detail the situation then.
Bruno Fernandes recalled in an interview with Rio Ferdinand on BT Sport (England): “Marcus Rashford was probably in his best form before the game against Wolves. He did something wrong and the coach pulled him out. Everyone was like “wow”. In the first moments we were like ‘wow, he’s a main player for United and we need him’.
I sat next to David De Gea and I said “it has to be like this, because otherwise the younger people will think ‘if he (Ten Hag) does nothing he (Rashford) is next. I won’t do anything either.”
Marcus Rashford was forced to accept the penalty of being on the bench in the match against Wolves. Ten Hag’s decision is reasonable. In the end, it was Ten Hag who threw Rashford on the field from the bench and Rashford scored the decisive goal for MU.
Bruno Fernandes added: “Erik Ten hag asks Rashy, you have to be consistent in everything, not just in your game, your goals and your performance, but also off the pitch. And at first, Marcus Rashford wanted and wanted to play, but he accepted it and came on and scored.”
Meanwhile, at that time, coach Erik Ten Hag was shy about the reason why Marcus Rashford did not start. The Dutchman described it as a matter of “internal discipline”, although Rashford stood in front of the camera after the game to admit his mistake of falling asleep. Rashford then took to Twitter to mock the episode, writing: “Better late than never.”
However, there was no lasting animosity between Marcus Rashford and coach Erik Ten Hag following that internal disciplinary case. Ten Hag later admitted it was a “risk” but stressed that any other disciplinary problems should be avoided that could “come back and hit you in the face”.
Bruno Fernandes agreed with the teacher’s comments and added: “At the end of the story, Erik Ten Hag and Marcus Rashford laughed and smiled. That’s how it has to be. I’m a parent and sometimes you have to Set some rules in the house, or else they will overtake you and in a short time they will be the owners of the house!”.
Since that disciplinary sentence, Marcus Rashford has maintained a terrible scoring form. He is considered the best striker in Europe today. However, Rashford has just suffered an injury in the match MU beat Barcelona 2-1 in the second leg of the Europa League play-off round. It is still unclear whether Rashford will recover from injury in time to participate in Ten Hag’s squad for the Carabao Cup final against Newcastle at 23:30 tomorrow (February 26) or not?